Walsh, James J.

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The Linacre QuarterlyVolume 7 | Number 1 Article 8January 1939St. Luke the Physician*James J. WalshFollow this and additional works at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnqRecommended CitationWalsh, James J. (1939) "St. Luke the Physician*," The Linacre Quarterly: Vol. 7 : No. 1 , Article 8.Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/lnq/vol7/iss1/8THE LINAORE QUARTERLY SJ. LUKE THE PHYSICIAN* By JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Pn.D. A number of physicians, not to mention other people, are inclined to doubt the tradition that St. Luke, the disciple of St. Paul and the writer of the third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles, was a physician . In the midst of what, in the last generation of the nineteenth century, came to be called the Higher Criticism of the Bible, one of the long accepted . traditions that has been most strenuously as~iled, and indeed in the minds of many scholars for a time at least quite discredited, was that with regard to St. Luke's being a physician. By far the most important con-tribution to this discussion in re-cent years came about the begin-ning of the twentieth century from the pen of Professor Har-nack, professor of Church History in the University of Berlin. Har· nack's name is usually cited as that of one of the most respected of the higher critics. His book, Luke the PhysicU1n, is an entire submission to the old-fashioned viewpoint that the writer of the third Gospel and of the Act of the Apostles had been a physician and was evidently well versed in all the medical lore of that time. H ar-nack is known for his knowledge of the history of medicine so that he is in a favorable position to *This is an excerpt from the Appendix of Old Time Makers of M edicine, pub-lished twenty-five years ago. This fact will account for some of the dates seem-ing to be far off. write with regard to this subject. Some of his works on medical con-ditions just before and after Christ are quoted confidently by the distinguished German medical historians. Here is his demonstration of St. Luke's place as a physician: "St. Luke, according to St. Paul, was a physician. ·when a physician writes a n historical work it does not necessarily fol-low that his profession reveals it-self in his writing, yet it is only natural for one to look for traces 'of the author's medical profession in such a work. These traces may be of different kinds : 1, the whole character of the narratiYe may be determined by points of view, aims and ideals which are more or less medical (disease and its treat-ment) ; 2, marked preference may be shown for stories concerning the healing of diseases, which stories may be given in great num-ber and detail ; 3, the language may be colored by the language of physicians (medical technical terms, metaphors of medical char-acter, etc.). All these three groups of characteristic signs," Harnack continues, "are found, as we shall see, in the historical work which bears the name of St. Luke. H er e, however, it may be obj ected that the subj ect matter itself is respon-sible for these traits so that their evidence is not decisive for the medical calling of the author." Harnack insists that ".Jesus ap-[ 11 I THE LI N ACRE QU A RTERLY peared as a great phys ician and healer. All the evangelist s say this of Him ; hence it is not su r-prising that one of them has set this phase of His ministry in the foreground and has regarded it as the most important. Our evan-gelist need not, therefore, have been a phys ician, especially if he were a Greek, seeing tha t in those days Greeks with r eligious inter-est s were disposed to regard re-ligion mainly under the category of healing and salvation. This is tme, yet such a combination of cha r acteristic points will compel us to believe that the author was a physician, if, 4, the description of the p articula r cases of disease shows dist inct traces of medical diagnosis and scientific knowledge; 5, if the language even where ques-tions of healing and medicine are not touched upon is colored by medica l phraseology; and, 6, if in those p assag es where the author sp eaks as an eye witness medical traits are especially a nd promi-nently apparent. These three kinds of tokens are a lso found in the historica l work of our author, Luke. It is accordingly proved that it proceeds from the pen of a physician." The importance of t he conces-sion that Luke was a physician should be properly appreciated. His whole gospel is written from tha t st andpoin t. For him, the Saviour was the healer , the good physi cian who went about curing the ills of the body while minis-t ering to people's souls. H e has more a ccounts of miracles of heal-ing than any of the other E van-gelist s. In a number of cases the correction of Mark's popula r lan-guage in the description of . ail-ments is made in t erms tha t could not have been used except by one thoroughly versed in the Greek medi cal terminology of the times. vVhen Luke told the story of the good Sama ritan, he added some in te rest ing det ails which indicate medical interest on the part of t he wri te L The use of oil and wine, for instance, was typically medi-cal a t tha t time, and Hippocrates had a number of recommendat ions for t his combina tion for wounds. The wine had a certain antiseptic quality, while the oil covered over the wound and kept bacteri a in the a ir from finding their way into it. The ancients did not know why, . but they knew from empiri-cal experience that wounds thus t reat ed, healed better, and Luke was in touch with that tradition and was careful to insert it into t he Gospel story . D r . Robinson, the well-known Scottish writer on the history of medi cine, summed up the evidence with regard to Luke's being a phys ician, very strikingly . H e said: "It is ma nifest from his Gospel that Luke was an . acute observer and had even given profess ional a ttention to all our Saviour's mir-acles of healing. Originally among t he E gyptians, divinity and phys-ics were united in the same order . of men, so that the priest h ad t he care of souls and was a lso the . physician . It was much the same [ 18 l THE LINAORE QUARTERLY under the Jewish economy, but after physic came to be studied by the Greeks they separated the two professions. That a ·physician should write the history of our Saviour's life was appropriate as there were divers mysterious things to be noticed concerning which his education enabled him to form a becoming judgment." Forty years ago many scholars were prone to doubt the idea of Luke's being a physician. Twenty years ago a number of biblical . scholars were convinced that the Luke traditions were not justified by recent investigations. Now we have come back once more to the complete acceptance of the old tradition, and no doubt is left that Luke was a physician, a follower of that Greek tradition of medi-cine which runs so clearly from Herodotus down to Galen and which has meant so much in the history of medicine. These two men who lived more than five cen-turies apart have left a very deep impress on the history of medi-cme. For nearly fifteen hundred years Galen continued to be the great t eacher of European medi-cine. Even in his time, Professor Osler used to say that every physi-cian ought to read some llippoc-rates every day so as to keep afresh his practice of observation, for observation is the most impor-tant thing in the world in the prac-tice of medicine, and diagnosis means ever so much more than treatment. Perhaps the most unfortunate characteristic of much nineteenth century criticism in all depart-ments, even those strictly scien-tific, was the marked tendency . to reject previous opinions for new ones. Somehow men felt them-selves so far ahead of old-time writers and thinkers that they concluded they must hold opinions different from their ancestors . In nearly every case, the new ideas that they evolved by supposedly newer methods are not standing the test of time and further study. There had been a continuous be-lief in men's minds having its basi.s very probably on a passage in one of St. Peter's Epistles that the earth would dissolve by fire. This was openly contradicted all dur-ing the nineteenth century and the time when the earth would freeze up definitely calculated by out· mathematicians. Now after hav-ing studied radio-activity and learned from the physicist that the earth is heating up and will even-tually get too hot for life, we calmly go back to the old Petrinc declaration. Some of the most distinguished of the German biol-ogists of the present day, such men as Dricsch and others, calmly tell us that the edifice erected by Darwin will have to come down because of newly discovered evi-dence and indeed some of them go so far as to declare that D arwin-ism was a crude hypothesis very superfici al in its philosophical as-pects and therefore acceptable to a great many people who, because it was easy to understand and was very different from what our fathers had believed, hast ened to [ 19 ] THE LINACRE QU A RTERLY accept it. Nothing shows the necessity for being conservative in the matter of new views in science or ethics or r eligion than the curi-ous transition state in which we a re with rega rd to many opinions a t the present time with a distinct t endency towa rd reaction to older VIews that a few years ago were thought quite untenable. We a re r ather proud of the advance that we a re sup posed to be mak-ing along many lines in science and scholarship and yet over and over again after years of work, we prove to have been following a wrong lead and must come back to where we started. This has been the way of man from the begin-ning and doubtless will continue, and the present gener ation is having this cunous r egressiOn tha t follows supposed progress strongly emphasized for them. Exploitation of the Medical Profession Everywher e it is rampant -newspapers, magazines, billboards, r adio. "Your doctor will t ell you that . .. " "Medical science has found that " "The greatest sp ecialist s m Timbuctoo say that . . ." And the rest of the story is, of course, "Use our pills or our vitamins three times a day; ask your doctor." You are forced to compete with those who offer your patients free advice reg a rding medical treatment. You deliver Mrs. Blank's baby today, and tomor-row she will receive by mail sam-ples of baby foods with complete directions how to use them. In-deed, some physician representing a commercial organization and knowing that the case is in your hands may address a personal let· t er to y our p atient offering his services free . It has been said that t en more years of the present trend of in-terfer ence in medical practice will do away with the need for privat e practice of infant feeding and other branches of medicine. Mead Johnson & Company have always believed that the feed-ing and care of babies and grow-ing children is an individual prob- . ]em that can bes t be controlled by the individual physician. For over twenty years and in dozens of ethical ways we have given pract i-cal effect to this creed. We hold the interest of the medical pro-fession higher than our own, for we too, no doubt, could sell more of our products were we to adver-tise them directly to the public. [ 20 1 

St. Luke the Physician*

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St. Luke the Physician*

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